My favorite road trip music

About the music you listen to on endless days on endless roads.

It’s summer and time for road trips*. Here is, in no particular order, an incomplete list of my favorite driving music:

Fields of the Nephilim – Elizium

I bought this album when I was 13. I’d just gotten the paycheck from my first job, and it just about covered some essentials and one CD. I was a frequent visitor to the record store (but not a frequent customer, as I had little money), and though I went in there with a plan to buy something else, the guy who ran the place had set Elizium aside for me and convinced me to give it a chance. I’d never heard Fields of The Nephilim before, so I sat down at the listening bar at the counter, where I spent the next 48 minutes having my mind blown.

At the time, I truly thought this relative stranger had some incredible insight into humanity to be able to know how much I would love this album, but looking back at my school portrait—

—mystery solved (Torunn, 13.)

Opeth– Ghost Reveries

I love Opeth, but I find it a bit too consuming to play in the background when I write and a bit too prog to play when people are around, so I mostly play it when I can pay proper attention to the music, like when I’m driving.

(This could have been Pale Communication or Sorceress, but Ghost of Perdition is my all-time favorite Opeth song, so Ghost Reveries it is.)

Monster Magnet– God Says No

I have no objectivity when it comes to this album. I bought it on a whim, I was pot-committed, and I listened to it on repeat until I had no choice but to love it. When I hear the first few bars of Melt, I want to be in a car (preferably a convertible, preferably on an endless road), belting along with Dave.

And I was thinkin' / How the world should have cried / On the day Jack Kirby died.

(And then Head Explodes begins, and however fast I drive, I want to go faster.)

Metallica …And Justice for All

One of the albums that would also appear on a top albums list. Probably my favorite Metallica album.

Puscifer – Conditions of My Parole

To be fair, this could be any Puscifer album. And it was between this and the live version What Is… (I prefer Puscifer when they’re a little freer, a little less produced) but it is all great.

(The same goes for A Perfect Circle, but it felt like a cheat to populate this list with both APC and Puscifer.)

Noisia – Outer Edges

This is a highway at night album. Probably my favorite Noisia album, which is saying something.

It’s pretty much perfection all the way through, but if I were to pick favorites, it would be Tentacles and Mantra.

Camo & Krooked – Mosaik

Ending on a different note: my daughters think my metal is a bit *insert blank, unimpressed, teenage stares here*, so we had to find some compromises. Camo & Krooked is loved by all, me included. It’s clever and beautiful and perfect to get lost in.

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*I was supposed to be at the cabin, writing, painting, reading, driving an hour to get ice cream— you know, summer cabin things. BUT, the car battery is dead. I drive electric, and for a while there, I’d hoped it was the 12v battery, but no, it’s the main battery. It will take four weeks and an eye-bleeding amount of money to fix. Not entirely unrelated; if any devils, demons, or other rich deities are in the market for a half-broken soul, let’s talk.

Anyway. What is your favorite driving music? Let me know in the comments.

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